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Arctic Bay ISP goes belly-up

Nunavut Internet access shrinking, with no help on horizon

KIRSTEN MURPHY

Despite efforts last year by Industry Canada to promote government spending on fast, affordable Internet access in remote Canadian communities, Nunavut remains light-years behind communities in the South.

With low-speed dial-up fees running as high as $95 a month, Nunavut communities suffer from the most expensive Internet rates and slowest connection speeds in the country.

A long-awaited report from the Nunavut broadband task force is set to be released on Jan. 29. The report will list 25 recommendations aimed at creating better Internet access throughout the territory.

Tim Reid, whose Internet service provider business in Arctic Bay went belly-up last month, says it’s a system fraught with problems.

Reid ran the Check It Out Internet Service for one year. The company owed more than $20,000 to creditors when it shut down.

At the company’s peak, 34 customers paid Reid $95 per month for unlimited dial-up access.

But Reid says he needed 38 customers to break even. When he turned off his seven modems on Dec. 28, customers owed him $5,500 in unpaid accounts and he was down to 20 clients.

The biggest blow, though, came when Arctic Data Systems, Reid’s IP address provider and hosting service, doubled its prices to $850 a month from $400.

"That killed me altogether," Reid said.

In early 2000, just months after Reid started his business, Brian Tobin, then federal industry minister, announced an ambitious move aimed at extending high-speed, or "broadband" Internet access to every Canadian household by 2004.

Tobin appointed a 35-person advisory committee to study the issue and produce a report for the government. The committee included Adamee Itorcheak, the president of Nunanet Worldwide Communications, Iqaluit’s most popular ISP.

He says the biggest barrier to Internet access in Nunavut is the high cost of leasing satellite transmission services, unlike southern Canada, where cheaper land-lines are used for telecommunications.

"The cost of satellite time is what keeps Nunavut from having high-speed Internet," said Itorcheak, who sits on a broadband task force created last year by the Department of Sustainable Development in response to the creation of the federal task force.

"I look at it from a realistic point of view. Who is going to spend a couple of thousand dollars to get connected if they’re trying to get housing or put food on the table?"

One suggestion is for the government to award contracts for Internet services to Nunavut Internet service providers — the way fuel and construction contracts go to public tender.

"Without the GN contracts, Internet service providers said they’d be unable to provide service because it’s too expensive and they don’t have the population to support it, said Alison Rogan, manager of DSD’s community economic development branch

Reid hopes to re-open his business one day. And when he does, he has plans to start an online auction business for carvers and artists.

"I’m going to get it back. Without it, Arctic Bay is not in the 21st century," he said.

Tobin’s task force recommended the federal government spend $4.6 billion to extend broadband Internet access to all Canadian communities by 2004.

But Finance Minister Paul Martin’s budget last fall did not provide any extra Internet funding from the federal government.

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